Virginity and the Monastic Economy of Perfection

Abstract

Virginity in Augustine’s thought lacked clear etiological significance; it had no organic function in his system. What preserved the ideal in the West was its realization in a plan for perfect Christian living, an economy based on the complete denial of sexuality, the institution of monasticism. With reverence for its own ancient origins, the cloister brought the ideal of virginal perfection from the East and installed it in the European consciousness at the beginning of the Dark Ages. But while incorporated in the West, the soul of monasticism remained eastern; its allegiance continued to lie with the Fathers of the Christian gnostic tradition.¹ Their equation of virginity with the ontological state of prelapsarian human nature was the central concern in the panoply of now rather unfamiliar ideas that came to form the medieval monastic tradition of culture and studies.